Desert Tortoise Lament

Long down the shadow-heavy hedgerows,
I watch the hare hurry to ensnare his glory,
while I plod on with probity and without worry,
my scaled feet pigeon-toed, my belly eking furrows.

I’ll live my century thinking my slow thoughts.
My tongue, thick as an obstinate root, works well
to teach sparrows which grubs to pluck from gravel.
My leathery gaze stops centipedes dead in their tracks.

Years ago, the Tongva carried my tender carapace
across a flooded desert to save and honor their sister;
afterwards, I wandered delirious in search of a river’s
voice that would guide me back to my people’s place.

But a man filled with music found me—a lapidary
harmony with some hope beyond himself—rescuing me
from stone-throwing boys, then chained dogs gone crazy
with neglect, and from a mowing machine. Near an aviary

I live now, suburbanite, unhurried talisman for this race
in which my stride gets pitted against a rabbit’s hop.
I always win. A sickle moon grins at me where I stop,
my old heart languorous, my past nearly erased.

Landscape in December

During each full moon the forest shudders,
leaf by leaf, as if some platinum weight
enters the pores of living trees on a cellular level,
dousing them with a heavy, metallic sheen.
Even the marbled boulders wear an afterglow
from that lunar drenching and emanate a cool,
glistening aureole, as from halogen haloes.

How I love to walk outdoors on such nights,
in any season, when the stars step backwards
into silvered shadows, the austere mountains
kindling inner fires as if they’re volcanic.

Last winter I took a midnight stroll alone,
meandering along a snow-littered trail aglow
with neon from the waxing moon, and I found
a dying grosbeak, its ochre breast blood-tinged.
Perhaps I’d scared off a coyote, although
the air’s quiet veered against this thought.
Reaching for it, I knew I couldn’t save it.

Still, I touched its wing gently before
turning away, leaving it to its frosty rest.
Useless, I thought, to hold what I can’t revive.
I see myself now in that bird’s glazed eyes—
my puzzled face dark with mortal yearnings,
and overhead the moon’s disguised as a zero,
or else as eternity’s cavernous mouth.

– Maurya Simon

In our ECO LIT series, Red Canary Magazine dedicates space for established writers and emerging voices to imagine better ways of being.